Re:Do You Have the Right to Plead Not Guilty When Your Lawye...
by buckminster on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @06:57PM
(#16173277)
1) Yes. The lawyer can only know the client is guilty if the client tells him.
2) Yes.
3) Yes. The difficulty arises when the lawyer has been provided with evidence by the client which supports the charge.
Ultimately it's the lawyers job to present the client's case, however implausible. However, "I did it but I want to pretend I didn't" isn't a case, it's a lie.
Re:Do You Have the Right to Plead Not Guilty When Your Lawye...
by SilasX on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @08:01PM
(#16173709)
So... you're agreeing or disagreeing that a lawyer can ethically represent a client who he believes "did it" by arguing that the evidence is insufficient?
If you agree, that's walking back on your original comment; if you disagree, that seems to go sharply against 1/2/3.
Edit: As the others note, this is going sharply against well-known legal principles. Do you have any authoritative citation that UK lawyers can't represent clients at all on a not-guilty plea while believing them to have "done it"?
1) Defendants have the right to a trial, regardless of how "obviously guilty" they are in anyone's eyes.
2) Trials are, in part, about whether the state has met its burden to prove the elements of the case, regardless of the lay truth of the accused's guilt. [A]
3) Given the above, the work of a lawyer (in a trial) does not inherently involve the representation that "this defendant is innocent", but only that "there is insufficient evidence of that element of the case", which needn't be a fraud on the court, even if the prosecution's claim is true.
(With that said, more specific lies can be off limits.)
[A] A Man for All Seasons: "The world must judge according to its wits; this court must judge according to the law."